The Islamic State has turned northward and attacked Kurdish positions in Ninewa taking several towns and leading to a huge exodus of mostly Yazidis. That has led to a pan Kurdish response with Turkey's PKK and Syria's PYD sending in their fighters to support the Iraqi peshmerga. Even Baghdad has thrown in air support. For the first time IS is leading to a regional response. Here's a link to the article.
This in unrelated.
This is Iraq, not Syria or Libya. US "broke" that nation, it has to play a role in "fixing" - what it does is left to smart people in Washington (I'm not paid to stress my brains for the US).
The point is a LOT is happening in Iraq and the US has to be involved in this, it cannot risk irrelevance.
I agree with your last sentence. However, the world is basically on it's own until at least Jan 2017 and that includes Iraq.Originally Posted by KingJaja
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
They are slaughtering Christians and destroying monuments that are holy to the christian religion and people still say this isn't a religious war. We should get every B-52 we have wipe Isis from the face of the earth! Forget about precision we should go for grid square destrction *********.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 08-09-2014 at 11:02 AM. Reason: Edited by moderator, author aware not within SC RoE
To combat ISIS in Iraq, *******
Last edited by davidbfpo; 08-09-2014 at 11:04 AM. Reason: Edited by moderator, author aware not within SC RoE
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. - Louis Veuillot
The US can't "fix" Iraq. They already took their best shot, and the outcome is what you see. Do you really want them to have another go?
The US policy in Iraq was hopelessly flawed from the start. It was not an error of ignorance: the people who designed the downfall of Saddam and its aftermath knew the situation. It was an error of hubris: they believed, really believed, that they could "install" inclusive democracy and that the magic of inclusive democracy would bring the factions together in a functioning government. They were wrong. The price is now being paid.
We occasionally see people ask "why can't we just divide Iraq"? Of course Iraq is already in the process of dividing itself, in the way these processes generally go (very messy). The reality is that it's no longer up to "us", however you define "us", and that unless "we" re-invade and start over (no chance) the Iraqis are just going to do it themselves.
The posts above demonstrate part of the range of American frustration: "blame the President" and "kill them all". Realistically, of course, the die was cast before the current President took office and killing them all is never much of a solution. I expect that the response will be to offer support to the existing "Government" conditional on reforms, but I don't expect that to accomplish much.
Iraq was always going to have a dictator or dissolve. Domestic politics won't allow the US to install a dictator, so we're seeing gradual dissolution. What's the US supposed to do about it?
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Careful now Steve or you will have Bill on your case (what with this criticism of US policy)... or, maybe its OK because you are a yank?
I think domestic politics will enable to install a benign dictator if we have credible civilian leaders that can make a case that is the best of all the bad options, and tie it to humanitarian reasons. The leader can add that we'll help Iraq set conditions for establishing democracy in time, but right now is not the right time since newly formed democracies are the most instable and most likely form of government to fail. Hard to stabilize a country that has suffered multiple years of sanctions, just finished a war with the U.S., and ethnic passions are rising by installing an unstable government.
Furthermore while I agree we broke it, I don't the think the combat operations did that much harm to Iraq (the initial operations), what broke Iraq was our cowardly 10 plus years of sanctions that destroyed the local economy while making Saddam stronger. It isn't as simple as you make it out to be.
It's a concept called counter value targeting....are you familiar with it?To combat ISIS in Iraq, we should bomb ******
Last edited by davidbfpo; 08-09-2014 at 11:06 AM. Reason: Edited by moderator, author aware not within SC RoE
We Got Some Airpower Jumping Off
Finally.......the President is going to cut some Airpower loose to help the Christians who are starving in Iraq because the nice peace loving Muslims are trying affect a Christian genocide. We will see how well this works.
Slap:
Hopefully that airdrop was actually needed and not just a pr stunt. Tom Odom wrote of a pr airdrop that he was forced to be part of in Congo (then Zaire). The limited number of airplanes involved make me think it was more a pr thing.
I am not sure about airstrikes unless we have good targeting which may be difficult to do. If it can't be done, with certainty, I would rather see the Kurds get truckloads of ammo and boxes full of money.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
I don't mind having Bill on my case; we've disagreed many times before and always on reasonably congenial terms. I've been critical of US policy many times, and I thought the move on Iraq was a mistake from the start, not because Saddam didn't deserve it (he did) but because I didn't think the US could control the aftermath. I never believed that the US could successfully "install democracy", and said so repeatedly.
At this point... I could see the point in providing support to the Kurds, despite the problems with Turkey. I really don't see much point in US support for Maliki. I expect they will feel obligated to give some, probably with demands for reforms as a tradeoff, but I don't see that going anywhere. Maybe I'm overly pessimistic, but I don't see much reason for optimism.
I think the "benign dictator" option is no longer open. It might have been immediately after Saddam's fall, but with the dissolution of the old military and the incapacity of the new one, what's the "benign dictator" (oxymoron) going to use to establish control? Where do you find a dictator that we can pretend is benign who can also inspire the military to win and who will not be completely rejected out of hand by one or more of the major ethnic groups? I think that ship has sailed. Again, it's no longer about us, and any proposal like "we should divide Iraq" or "we should install a benign dictator" has to recognize that. It's no longer our choice. We had our opportunity, selected an unachievable goal, and blew it. We don't get another shot... unless of course we re-invade and start over from square 1, and we all know that's not happening.
I don't think it's about the combat operations or the sanctions. Combat damage can be repaired and an economy can grow back to health with outside assistance and stable governance. I think the mistake was our Quixotic pursuit of a form of government that Americans could accept as "supporting democracy" but which was simply not suitable for the realities of post-Saddam Iraq.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
What many forget was the simple fact that there was an ongoing Salafist insurgency already in progress being bitterly fought between them and the ISS.
Yes we broke it as we literally walked into the middle of this insurgency totally not knowing about it which if left alone would have eventually led to Saddam being overthrown by his own not an outside force.
That Salafist insurgency bridged across both the Shia and Sunni sides and did not include AQI.
We don't know if those insurgents would have won. At the time the prevailing belief was that there was little imminent domestic threat to Saddam. Many of the prevailing beliefs of that time were of course later proven wrong.
It's always best if a dictator falls to an internal force, because if there's an internal force that's strong enough to topple the dictator, there's an internal force that has enough strength and credibility to at least try to rule. National liberation movements often rule badly, but at least there isn't a total power vacuum.
If a dictator is toppled by an outside force that does not intend to rule, it leaves a power vacuum. Various parties then contend to fill that vacuum. The contention is not generally very polite. If the outside force that toppled the dictator keeps forces around, the contention may be fairly muted for a while, but that's not going to last forever. Sooner or later the foreign force goes home and the contending parties duke it out for control of whatever they can grab, helped by whatever sponsors they can line up. I don't see how any of this is a surprise.
Last edited by Dayuhan; 08-08-2014 at 09:48 AM.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
I think Obama's instinct is that people should be left alone to take care of their own ####. But as president he still has to get into various half baked interventions (sort of worst of both worlds, because it was not well thought out, objectives are distorted by humanitarian posturing, planners are blind sided by genuine misconceptions about the nature of power and social organization... Or motivated by greed or other personal interests). Ideally the US should either understand it's worldcop /imperialist power role and execute it with clarity or it should butt out and let others sort things out without ham handed American interventions and payoffs to distort the playing field... Something like that
Last edited by omarali50; 08-08-2014 at 03:41 PM.
That could work if everyone followed that line of thinking. Obama is not smart enough to realise that applying this unilaterally a vacuum is created and the laws of physics apply.
Yeah - and directing it at the centers of one of the world's largest religion is both a war crime and the height of strategic folly.
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. - Louis Veuillot
Further to this comment...
In discussions in the Syria thread those who warned of spill-over into the region were shouted down by the usual crowd of 'smart-guys' who post here.
Now the spill-over is evident and serious they continue to post here as if nothing has changed and nothing has happened. Just like US foreign policy where cock-up after cock-up is made the Administration and Department of State carry on as if nothing has happened and that they are still the smartest guys in the room.
It is surely time for America to he humble... it is surely time for the US to take stock of where, how and why things have gone so badly wrong... and fix it.
IMHO the first in the order of business is to deal with intellectually arrogant people blunder on and refuse to take responsibility for the consequences of the trail of disaster they have left in their wake.
What we read here in SWC is just a mirror reflection of the greater US problem of indescribable arrogance.
That is right. It is time we face the reality that we are fighting a Religious War and there is know Strategy. But there can and should be justice. The Islamic barbarians are killing Christian women and children in the most horrific ways! They have destroyed church upon church some that date back to the 8th century and beyond and they burned holy Christian documents that can never be replaced.
So it is time to face the fact that we are not fighting a religion of peace we are fighting a Satanic cult and traditional laws and rules used by normal human beings will not work against the ***** animals we are facing.... everything they value should be wiped off the face of the earth.
And Saudi Arabia should be made to pay for it all since they are the ones that started this crap to start with.
listen to Sergeant Johnson he understands!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu4ca3h-JQY
Last edited by davidbfpo; 08-09-2014 at 11:00 AM. Reason: Author aware of SWC RoE and language hence editing
I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone that said it wouldn't spread throughout the region, it is part of the larger Shia-Sunni conflict that at least rages from Pakistan to Lebanon. What several have asserted is there was little the U.S. could do "fix it." We lost our humility when we went into Iraq in a hubristic manner, and now that we have regained our humility you're arguing we should regain our hubris so we can fix a problem that has it roots running back over 600 years ago, and then further exasperated by the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916 where France and England drew some arbitrary lines on a map that were not sustainable.
If Sunnis and Shia want to kill each other, then let them, then maybe like the Christians did they'll tire of their religious war in time. I do agree we should help the minorities that desire help, which we're doing now a day late and a dollar short.
You're very quick to think America can fix all the world's problems. While we don't seem like it at times, I think we're humble enough to realize we can't. I can't recall the title of GEN Zinni's book, but after dealing with multiple problems worldwide, to include finishing his career has the commander of CENTCOM, he believes it is best to let certain fights continue to their end and then help pick up the pieces. We have rarely been successful when we step in the middle to two warring parties, much less step in the middle of several hundred warring groups as there are in Syria.
Last edited by Bill Moore; 08-09-2014 at 02:37 AM.
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